Ask the Tribune: Why is the Ames Tribune an afternoon paper?

Saturday

Why is the Ames Tribune an afternoon paper? The Des Moines Register is a morning paper, and I feel like it would be more convenient to get my Tribune at the same time.

Why is the Ames Tribune an afternoon paper? The Des Moines Register is a morning paper, and I feel like it would be more convenient to get my Tribune at the same time.

Ask The Tribune would like to point out that the Ames Tribune is published four days a week in the afternoon, and delivered in the morning on Saturday and Sunday. Ask the Tribune is not a morning person, and she feels compelled to starchily remind Dear Reader that she rises early on Sunday just to make it to your doorstep, properly dressed and answering your questions.

The reason the Ames Tribune is an afternoon paper has much to do with history as well as tradition. To answer Dear Readerís question, Ask the Tribune chatted with publishers both present, Geoff Schumacher, and past, Verle Burgason.

In the general history of newspapers in the U.S., afternoon papers were the norm. In fact, the first daily paper in the American colonies began publishing in 1783 as the Pennsylvania Evening Post. Weekly publications or gazettes that gained popularity in colonial times persisted in various forms into the 20th century as afternoon publications.

In a pre-Internet world, as printing technology and transportation allowed the delivery of news more and more quickly, local large city markets became saturated with competing newspaper publications, and they varied their delivery times in an attempt to capture larger audiences of readers. One hundred years ago and more, two (or even more) newspaper towns were not unusual. Consider as an example the Detroit Free Press (morning) and Detroit News (afternoon) or the Seattle Times (morning) and Seattle Post-Intelligencer (afternoon).

Which leads us to the history of Iowa newspapers, which was much the same. Once upon a time, Des Moines supported two newspapers as well, the Des Moines Register (morning) and the Des Moines Tribune (afternoon). Both Burgason and Schumacher surmise that the Ames Tribune positioned itself as an afternoon paper to compete at its best with the two large competitor papers to the south. The Des Moines Tribune always had a substantially smaller circulation than the Register. When the Des Moines Tribune ceased publication in 1982, that further solidified the Ames Tribuneís position as an afternoon paper.

Burgason, who started working at the Ames Tribune in 1952, and whose personal memory of the Ames Tribune goes back even further to the 1930s, said the paper has been an afternoon paper for more than 100 years. Ames hasnít been a two-newspaper town itself since 1919, when the Tribune and the Ames Times were consolidated into one daily publication.

At this time, the Ames Tribune will continue its long history and tradition of afternoon publication. Ask the Tribune considers it a way for local readers to have the experience of the golden age of newspaper. A daily paper in the morning, a daily paper in the evening and a mail subscription to the Sunday New York Times to go with weekend coffee and leisure. It sounds lovely to her newspaper-y self and inky fingers.

Ask the Tribune can be reached at (515) 663-6922

or lmillsaps@amestrib.com.

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